Umberto Eco: The Prague Cemetery

[ applause ]

[Julia Keller:]

To read a novel by Umberto Eco
is to enter an enchanted forest -

a symbol-drenched, passion-drowned forest
that's alive with murmurings,

heavy with history
and glittering with myth.

He writes of mad monks
and museums of technology,

and, in his latest book,
of night-shrouded cemeteries

that are filled with
quivering, iniquitous souls.

He writes about things we all recognize -
lust and greed and love - curiosity, envy.

His books may dazzle us
with their erudition

but they also are entertainments -
they're beguiling.

Now, if you're here today,

you already know all of this
that I've just said, but,

I hope that after today's session

you're going to know him
quite a bit better.

So, it's my great honor and privilege
to ask you to join me

in welcoming to Chicago,
Professor Umberto Eco.

[ applause ]

Professor, your new novel is, I think,

one that contains things
that we all recognize.

It's seemingly set in the 19th century,
but, The Prague Cemetery

of course, has things that sound
eerily contemporaneous.

There are all kinds of conspiracies
and cabals and plots

that are hatching all over the place.

So, my question for you is -

how in the world did you know
this would be happening now?

[ rumble of laughter ]

[Umberto Eco:] If I wrote this novel,
it was exactly because I believed that

it can happen and will happen now
and in the future.

And, when writing,
even though I made a lot of research

to dive practically into the 19th century
and to live in that era,

I was continuously aware that
I was telling about something around me,

and I was always thinking of
somebody I know.

And, I would like that my reader
used this novel as a guide -

as a Baedeker to go around to say -

"Oh look, one Simonini!
Look, one Simonini! Look, one Simonini!"

You can do it in Italy, but you,
I think that you can do it also

in Chicago, or in Washington,
or in Paris or...

because then the...
well, I have written largely on

the function that forgeries have had
in the human history.

It's from the beginning.

Sometimes even they had
a positive function.

For instance,
inventing marvelous kingdoms

and people went to explore the world
in order to find them -

the El Dorado myth and so on
and so forth.

And, sometimes having terrible effects,

as in the case of
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

So, I think that the...

everyday activity of many [...],

journalists, newspapers is
to produce a fake dossier -

[ sporadic laughter ]

is to give fake news.

You know, being interested in
the problem of languages -

I am a semiotician, so I am interested in
various forms of communication -

I was interested in lying because
it's a typical human activity.

[ laughter ]

No, a dog tells always the truth.

When a dog barks means that
there is somebody outside.

I have never seen a dog who barks
in order to cheat me

and to say that there was
someone outside... no. [ to laughter ]

So, a dog is unable to lie.

We lie continuously even in everyday life:
"Oh, nice to see you."

[ laughter ]

It's very polite,
it's a very polite lie, okay?

"You look very well today" -
we are lying for more reasons

and we are lying for terrible...
so that the human life is...

completely filled up with lies
and fake news and so and so forth.

That's my... the story of my Simonini
was obviously an exceptional liar -

a professional liar.

[Keller:] Right. Maybe just as a...
for those of you...

The Prague Cemetery is about,

if you want to just give it maybe
a brief synopsis,

about this character in the 19th century
who really in effect winds the clocks

of all the great conspiracies
from the 19th century,

including that great forgery
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

and other forgeries.

And, all the bad things that happen
in the world in the 19th century

could be at this character's feet.

And, a great part of the novel
is his diary

and his musings on
what he's doing and why,

including the great Latin phrase -
"odi ergo sum - I hate therefore I am."

[ laughter ]

And, that's one of the phrases that
struck me in thinking:

"Boy that sounds so much
like what we hear today."

We hear a lot of the motivations for the

some the terrible events
that are now rocking the world

And, all the other terrible activities
that we think are so new

and so unprecedented, of course,
have their origin many many centuries ago.

And, your other novels too,
of course, deal with conspiracies

and the tendency of human beings to

not live up to our potential
as moral beings.

[Eco:] Yes, well, at least one -
the Foucault's Pendulum

But, it was in a way different

because it was on the paranoia
of the universal conspiracy.

So, it was a grotesque representation
of people who believe

or pretend to believe in
a general conspiracy.

In this case, Simonini makes
real conspiracies.

We have to make
a very sharp distinction between

a conspiracy and the paranoia of
the word "conspiracy."

Conspiracies exist.

In order to kill Julius Caesar,
they made a conspiracy.

It was discovered the day after -
or on the same day.

Catiline was making a conspiracy,
Cicero denounced it in the Senate

and the conspiracy
was probably in this moment

in Rome as in Washington
where people are making conspiracies,

I don't know... to conquer a bank,
to change a minister.

But, the paranoia of general conspiracy -
the word "conspiracy" - is

there is somebody
and we don't know which one,

who - in the world -
is trying to organize everything

as a sort of a cult power
who has all the responsibility -

we are not responsible.

That's why all the dictators
used the idea of a general conspiracy

in order to not be criticized,

to keep their people united
against somebody... somebody.

Yes, I, as a young boy,
having been born in '32,

so, for the first 10 years of my life
were under the fascist education.

It was educated to hate the conspiracy
of the demo-pluto-Judeo democracies.

Democracy, plutocracy - the rich persons -
and the Jews.

That was the world conspiracy.

And, well, we are celebrating...~
we were celebrating yesterday in Italy

a portentous event,
by which I read in the newspaper

that people in the street
were singing Handel's "Hallelujah."

[ sings ] Hal-le-lu-jah!

But he was continuously saying:
"they are there, there they are

"menacing not only me,
but you Italian."

So, you have to invent the conspiracy.

The Jewish conspiracy was
on the great element of this paranoia,

not only in the 19th century,

but one of the documents
were the "Protocols."

and they were certainly born
in the second half of the 19th century.

They were, I say "certainly"
because the only technical proof we have

is that they were published
in Russia in 1905.

But all the concoction
lasted for some decades,

let's say, from 1860, 1850
until the end of the century.

This uncertainty about the concoction

allowed me to invent
a fictional story about...

I could attribute to Simonini many deeds

that were certainly accomplished
by somebody else,

but we don't, we do never know
exactly who they were...

because there were many,
many hands at work.

It may be true.

I want to ask is,

we have such a short time here today
and I wanted to mention too,

we're going to be taking questions
from the audience

in just a couple of minutes
after we've finished talking here,

and, if you would,
if you do have a question,

Professor Eco would ask
if you'd come down front

so to make sure
he'll be able to hear you.

So, if you have questions
percolating in the back of your mind,

just come forward in just a moment
when we go to a question session.

I wanted to mention,
you love, lists, long catalogs,

long litanies of things
in your books.

They're filled with this,
these beautiful long lists,

and you have a wonderful section--

[Eco:] I have written also
a book on lists.

[Keller:] Exactly, I was saying
and you talked about the reasons why

and when you pointed that out,
I began to think of all the books

that do have lists in them
that I hadn't really thought of.

"Moby Dick" is filled with long lists
and Colin Harrison's "Manhattan Nocturne,"

long lists, and Tim O'Brien's story
"The Things They Carried" -

they have such power
and I was curious,

but when when did you realize that?
When did the list sort of

make itself known to you
as more than a technique

but a kind of a poetical force?

[Eco:] A long time, a long time ago.

Now, I can tell you okay,
the first, the paramount example of lists

is in Homer's Iliad

where is the so-called "catalog of ships."

What was the purpose of this list?

There were too many: it is impossible
to name all of them.

So, my mouth has not
enough tongues to tell of--

this is a poetical topos
that returns, returns many times

in the history of literature.

They have not enough tongues to say,

and so, the list being always incomplete,
even though very long,

must give you the sense of infinity.

In this sense, it is a beautiful resort,

a beautiful... literary strategy,

just in order to suggest infinity.

It is very difficult to suggest infinity
without a list:

I think that the only one who succeeded

was Dante Alighieri
at the end of the "Paradise"

when he's watching God
and in three tercets

he says everything...
without making a list.

But, it's a very exceptional case.

I think that I found first the lists
and I became fond of them

because I started as a medievalist
and by reading medieval poetry,

and it was full, it was a very...

And I remember that when I made
in Harvard the Norton Lectures,

my first idea was to make them on lists,

then I abandoned the idea
for many reasons.

And, two years ago,
the Louvre

is and was organizing
every year in November